by Jaym Gates
“Can you tell me how to get to Paprika Place?” he asked from afar, tapping into Fluffasaurus’ PA system.
The group scrambled to their feet, leveling their rifles at Charlie and Fluffasaurus.
“We aren’t here to hurt you. We just want to go home,” Charlie said, his voice amplified by Fluffasaurus’ speakers.
Maybe these people weren’t viewers. If they’d been viewers, they’d recognize Charlie and Fluffasaurus. They’d be like old friends, some of their first teachers helping them learn their letters and numbers, sharing and manners.
Or maybe their parents had worked for MouseCorp or CapeCo, maybe they’d been forbidden to watch Bunco’s shows.
They shouted at Charlie, waving their guns. Charlie didn’t want to hurt anyone, so he asked Fluffasaurus to back away and give them a wide berth. His big friend roared sadly when they were away from the group.
“I know, Fluffasaurus. I wish we could make friends, too.”
In the last few days, they’d passed several small groups, usually just a handful of tired people huddled around bonfires, fighting over a bloated can of beans or irradiated soy-blocks.
All Charlie ever wanted to do was make friends, to meet people and help anyone he could. He was made for helping, for friendship, for Paprika Place.
Charlie reached out with his organic felt hand and patted Fluffasaurus’ chrome flank as they left the scrawny boys behind. The beast roared a soft response, the lowest volume setting on his speakers that had been repurposed for C3 tactical purposes.
When they were young, before Bunco re-imagined them and sent everyone to the front lines of the Market Wars, Fluffy’s roar had been the happiest sound in Paprika Place. Fluffasaurus would roar to call the whole neighborhood for lunch and dinner.
First, Messy the Garbage Monster would crash out of his dumpster and waddle over with his cardboard box shoes and his permanent frown. Then Bob and Danny would trundle out of their one-bedroom apartment, Bob fussing over Danny’s hair, arguing over who was supposed to do the dishes …
No. It hurt Charlie too much to think about them, about how it used to be. He patted Fluffasaurus and squeezed with his heels, asking his friend to turn left, toward the largest source of heat.
“Are you hungry, Fluffasaurus?” Charlie asked. Fluffasaurus’s bio-silicone eye rolled up to look at Charlie and his pal let out a low rumbling roar.
“Me too.” They’d both been retrofitted with micro-nuclear engines when they were re-imagined, but Bunco hadn’t removed their stomachs, hadn’t engineered out hunger.
Charlie hopped off of Fluffasaurus, sending up a dust cloud when he landed. He walked around to Fluffasaurus’ flank and pushed the button to open his hatch.
Back in Paprika Place, Fluffasaurus had been stuffed with fluffy tissue and felted organs, his three horns made of polished keratin and his bright-blue scales covered in soft fur. But when Bunco needed more soldiers, he had been re-imagined into an armored personnel carrier. They attached chrome plates to his flanks and dug out his insides to make room for the
cyborg soldiers of Paprika Place.
The platform hit dirt with a dull thud, and Charlie looked inside. His original eye adjusted to the dim light, seeing past the racks to the box at the far end, where Charlie stored their dwindling rations.
He locked his eyes forward, ignoring the racks. The furthest top bunk was empty. That one was Charlie’s, though when it wasn’t too cold outside, he slept on Fluffasaurus’ back rather than inside.
With the bodies.
Charlie opened the footlocker and pulled out a tube of protein, as well as one of the cookies a former viewer had tossed over the fence before they were turned away from Houston. He went back out and split the food with Fluffasaurus while they tried to decide where to go next.
#
“Can you tell me how to get to Paprika Place?” he asked for the ten thousandth time at the five thousandth town. This one was barely a village, just a cross-hatching of planks connecting cookie-cutter starter homes and a barrier wall of tires.
Only one person came to answer their call.
“What?” the girl said, a confused look on her face. She looked up, pulling back her hood to see Charlie atop the back of Fluffasaurus.
The girl’s eyes went wide. “Charlie? Charlie the Fox?” Charlie nodded. He opened his arms wide, fluff-and-fur on one side, burnt chrome on the other.
She leaned forward and said, “Fluffasaurus?” The dinosaur roared in response, low, in the strained way he did trying to re-create his old voice.
Tears filled the girl’s eyes, and she rushed forward, wrapping her arms around one of Fluffasaurus’ thick legs.
“What happened to you?” The girl looked around twelve, all lean muscle and sallow cheeks, but her voice came out much younger, a touch of repressed childhood bubbling up. How long had she been on the streets? Had her company abandoned this town, too?
“Bunco needed more soldiers.” Charlie reached up and rested his organic hand on the girl’s back, trying to comfort her. “They filled us up with the newest technology from their subsidiaries and shipped us off to war with the Mouse. All of us, Ms. Magpie, Funny Bear, Fluffasaurus. Everyone.”
The girl turned and looked at Charlie. “You just went away. My little brother was four, and one day your show was just gone.”
Charlie nodded. They’d had no more warning, just an early morning call for a location shoot that ended in a Bunco R&D facility.
“What’s your name?”
“Sally,” she said. “I go by Sal.”
Charlie scanned the surrounding block, piles of debris giving a dozen spots for a girl to take cover or lay down a pack. “Is your brother here, Sal?” Charlie asked. “I’d love to meet him.”
The girl shook her head, her lips tight. “Contaminated food,” she said, finally.
Charlie’s ears dropped, crestfallen. “I’m so sorry.”
Eat healthy, kids. Your food is your future. Charlie furrowed his brow, but he couldn’t remember the song that went with that line anymore. Not even the chorus, which he must have practiced a hundred times in the studio for the global simulcast.
Charlie stayed with Sal for a half-hour, telling stories about the show and dodging questions about the rest of the cast as best he could. When he took the cookie and put it on the shelf with the letters from viewers he’d kept through the whole war, he kept her from seeing what was on the bunks. She didn’t need to see any more death.
When the guards came to escort him out, Charlie looked back from Fluffasaurus’ neck and waved to Sal, setting his camera to record her as she waved back. Tears trickled down her face as he turned the corner to the airlock and back into the countryside. He needed every happy memory he could fit in his memory banks.
What do we have to go back to? Will Paprika Place even be there?
But he had to go back. He had to take them home.
#
Paprika Place was somewhere on the east coast, he knew that much. The show had broadcasted in Eastern Standard, and the producers had always talked about the time-delay for the west coast. Maybe they were in New York. That’s where dreams were born for American children, packaged up and streamed around the world: Kenya and Thailand and Cambodia and Kazakhstan, anywhere that Bunco could license their programming. But it could be D.C., Boston, or even down in Florida, though most of that territory belonged to The Mouse and Charlie thought they wouldn’t have been sent to California if they had started that close.
The ash and debris were still thick, so Charlie and Fluffasaurus rode on, an integrated compass keeping Charlie on his bearing of east-north-east.
Charlie patted Fluffasaurus on the shoulder, comforting himself as much as his companion. “Maybe someone in Louisville will know, Fluffasaurus. What do you think about that?”
Fluffasaurus roared, shaking the ground at his feet.
“I hope so, too.”
#
Louisville was empty. Fluffasaurus’s radar spo
tted a half-dozen MouseCorp projectors on the outskirts.
As recently as three months ago, he would have never intentionally gone toward a hard light projector, but the war was over, and if there was any chance someone knew about Paprika Place…
Charlie’s Geiger counter started ticking as they approached the projectors. Charlie slept inside Fluffasaurus so he didn’t have to try breathing the ash or deal with the fallout. Fluffasaurus didn’t have to breathe anymore, and was hardened against radiation.
MouseCorp’s best practices called for clusters of six pods to secure a supply depot. There had to be food out there somewhere.
Charlie hopped off Fluffasaurus and crouched low to the ground, using the abilities Bunco had given him.
Because he was quiet, Charlie had been picked to be the intrusion specialist. Charlie didn’t like that name, didn’t like the job. They gave him camouflage glands and a light-bending stealth mode, razor-sharp claws with poison pods. The producers sent him to slit throats, plant explosives, and silence troublesome civilians, and many other things that were very mean. He’d forgotten the verses to the Neighbor Song, but he remembered every death he’d caused, every cry.
We don’t hurt our friends.
Play nice when meeting new people.
After sneaking past a patrol of hard-light projections, Charlie found the remains of a food drop in a soccer field, then snuck back out with his hands un-bloodied.
Sometimes, Charlie wished he was like Fluffasaurus — loud, big, and tough. Chalie didn’t like being quiet anymore. Even now, with the food in his hands.
#
A week later, they reached the outskirts of Philadelphia. Philadelphia had stayed independent, never sold to Bunco or the Mouse or anyone. They still had a mayor and representatives, all the old government that Charlie had learned and taught on the show. When the states started privatizing cities and counties, bringing in corporate investors, Paprika Place didn’t talk about it. Not at first.
Later, they had episodes titled “The Neighborhood Company” and “My Friend Bunco,” where Bunco the Bear had joined the cast. But Bunco wasn’t like the rest of his friends. Bunco didn’t live in Paprika Place, he went somewhere else when they were done shooting.
Charlie wondered if Bunco the Bear was still alive. He hadn’t gone with them to war, and the producers never mentioned him between missions.
I bet Bunco knows where he is. But where would he be? Not in Philadelphia, for sure. Probably safe in a high tower, with lots of guards and toys.
Maybe that would be better. Because if Charlie saw Bunco the Bear, Charlie would kill him.
#
The people of Philadelphia had put up big walls to keep out soldiers, which probably included Charlie, even though he didn’t want to be a soldier anymore.
Riding Fluffasaurus, Charlie rode up to a gate when someone spoke through a loudspeaker.
“Halt. Declare yourself.”
Charlie zoomed in with his robot eye and saw a young woman on the wall, holding a military-grade rifle. He patched into Fluffasaurus’ speakers and answered.
“My name is Charlie the Fox, and this is my friend Fluffasaurus. We don’t want to hurt anyone, we’re just trying to get home.”
“You’re Bunco-made, aren’t you? Corporate forces aren’t allowed inside the commonwealth.”
Charlie shook his head, though he might be too far away for her to see. “We don’t work for Bunco anymore.” The woman raised an eyebrow, probably disbelieving him.
“Why should I believe you?” she asked.
“Because Bunco turned my friends into killing machines, and all I ever wanted to do was meet new people and be a good friend. If you won’t let us in, can you tell me how to get to Paprika Place?”
“What?” she asked.
Fluffasaurus shifted weight, and Charlie held on to his friend’s horn to keep his balance. “Paprika Place. It’s where we come from. Bunco took us away from our home and I don’t really know exactly where it is. We have to get home. I promised.”
“Come closer. Slowly, and no weapons.”
Fluffasaurus clomped forward until they were just fifty feet from the gate. The edges were rusted, but the frame was well-made. It would hold for a long time. The woman was young, maybe even young enough to have been a viewer during the early years.
“We have weapons, but they’re not armed, and we can leave everything that isn’t attached to us at the gate if that helps. We’ve been on the road for a long time.” He sighed. “And we miss people.”
For a moment, Charlie could imagine who she was back when Paprika Place was on the air. Before both of them had become soldiers.
An older woman appeared with an even bigger rifle, and the young woman disappeared behind the wall. A minute later, she emerged from a door Charlie hadn’t seen, her gun trained on his head.
Charlie raised his hands, and Fluffasaurus knelt down, front legs first, then rear. Charlie held tight with his legs as Fluffasaurus moved. Falling off might prove he wasn’t dangerous, or she might take it as sudden motion and shoot him.
We never did a skit on proving to security forces that you’re a non-combatant.
He slid down the chromed side of Fluffasaurus, his hands above his head. The woman searched him, pulled off knives, a sidearm, and the two grenades at his belt.
“There is some ordnance inside Fluffasaurus.” He stopped for a second, uncomfortable. “What’s your name?”
“Alexis. Open the hatch, then put your hands on the beast.”
Fluffasaurus roared in complaint at the name, but Charlie shushed his friend.
“We need to cooperate, Fluffy.” The dinosaur opened his hatch, and Charlie did as Alexis said. She had curly red hair tied back in a dusty bandana. Up close, she reminded Charlie of Patty, one of the co-stars in season three. Patty’d had a wonderful voice, and had always been nice to Charlie, even when he forgot the words or said something wrong.
Alexis brought a hand up to her brow and squinted as she looked into Fluffasaurus. Her eyes went wide again, and she took a step back.
“Are they all …”
Charlie sighed. “Yes. Dead.” Two by two, the bodies of Charlie’s friends and neighbors from Paprika Place filled the bunks inside Fluffasaurus. Genetically engineered puppets didn’t decay. Instead, they lay silent and still, like broken toys.
Bob and Danny were side-by-side, each missing one half of their torsos. Messy was charred black, barely recognizable. Some were burned by lasers, others torn by bullets or choked by gas, their once-joyful faces twisted into masks of pain.
“Half of us died in the last battle, the rest afterwards, when the Bunco producers told us the war was over and that Bunco was ‘moving in another direction.’ We were obsolete, a loose end.”
Alexis gave him a sympathetic smile, her throat tight as she looked back into Fluffasuarus.
Charlie balled his paws into fists, and felt himself snarling at the memory.
1,2,3. I am angry that’s okay.
4,5,6. Count to ten and breathe today.
7,8,9, and 10. Now I’m fine and I can play.
Warm stickiness flowed in his palm, blood the color of blue silicone wiring.
They were all gone, but it wouldn’t be right to bury them out there in the concrete and dust. He had to get them home. He promised.
When Charlie looked up again, he saw Alexis hauling explosives and ammunition out onto the dusty ground. She’d found weapons Charlie didn’t even remember were still there. She must have been a soldier, maybe when Philadelphia had to fight off one company or another’s forces. Had she fought The Mouse, or CapeCo? Or even Bunco, defending the city against his former masters’ other forces?
“Have you had to fight the companies?” Charlie asked.
Alexis laughed, a hard look on her face. She went back inside for another look around. Her voice echoed inside his friend, making it sound larger and more distant. “Nah, they were happy to just sit back and lose two million househo
lds in the metro area.”
A moment later, she continued. “We got the capes first, then the bears. The rats never made it up here. Word has it they got bogged down in D.C. fighting army remnants.”
“I’m sorry. I’ve been in California for the last three years, I don’t know much of what happened elsewhere. I hope they left quickly.”
“They left, alright, but they left behind some kind of designer weed that near about killed all our crops. We’ll keep the weapons here, and you’ll get a two-day pass to visit. Make any trouble and we’ll send you to the bottom of the river, okay?”
Charlie stood and watched as they took the weaponry away, rifles still trained on Fluffasaurus. People used to trust Charlie. Before he’d been re-imagined, Charlie had made friends with every child he’d ever met, found a way to connect, to reassure the frightened, to inspire the curious.
His friends were counting on him, and Charlie always tried to be a good friend. Sometimes, it felt like the only part of the old Charlie that was left.
Once the ammunition was safely behind the wall, one of the older guards pulled Alexis aside.
They talked for a minute, then Alexis returned to Charlie with a sad look.
“You have to go, now.”
“You said we could come in.”
“I know, I’m sorry,” she said.
Charlie’s hands got hot again. He sung the Calm Down Song in his head again as he talked.
“We need to ask people about Paprika Place,” Charlie said, already knowing it was no use. They were nothing but trouble, and it had been a long time since people made friends with strangers.
From the ramparts, Charlie saw that more guards had come, with rifles and spears. One had a LAW rocket.
Alexis said, “Please. If you don’t go now, my aunt says they’ll fire.”
“I’m sorry, Alexis,” Charlie said as he crawled back onto Fluffasaurus.
“You didn’t do anything to me,” Alexis said.